


Like Getting Blood From A Bone

by Ms_Id



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfell (Undertale), Codependency, Fellcest - Freeform, Incest, M/M, Underfell Alphys (Undertale), Underfell Papyrus (Undertale), Underfell Sans (Undertale), Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:55:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25435000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ms_Id/pseuds/Ms_Id
Summary: Papyrus is indescribably hungry but food has lost its appeal. Sans, though... Sans smells delicious.Underfell!Papyrus is suddenly a vampire. That's it. That's the fic.... Maybe.... Sort of.
Relationships: Papyrus/Sans (Undertale)
Comments: 94
Kudos: 156





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SkeleShipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkeleShipper/gifts).



> My first stab at Underfell. Asked for prompts on Twitter and got some great ones. Went with Skeleshipper's request for vampire!Edge fellcest. I've never been a huge fan of vampires, but I wanted to try writing Underfell, so let's do this.
> 
> Alphys inexplicably seems to show up in all my fics. I couldn't really find a consensus on her Underfell characterization, so I'm just winging it. I'm winging most of the characterizations, tbh, but that one especially.

It started with a hunger, red hot and demanding at the core of his being. It was ever-present. The longer it went without being sated, the bigger it got. It was quickly becoming all Papyrus could think about. It swelled and pushed out all other, less important thoughts. It gnawed at him behind his ribs and in front of his spine. And somehow, through all of that, it managed to be picky.

The stink of Grillby’s permeated his nasal cavity from his own front door. He could practically feel it in the air, feel it slick on his bones.

Not even his lasagna held an appeal. And if anything should have, it would have been that. He was an _amazing_ chef. Yet last night he’d scarcely gotten down two forkfuls before it came back up again, leaving his system as raw magic. He’d heaved it into a napkin while Sans stared at him from across the table, fork frozen halfway to his own mouth.

“DISGUSTING. YOU DIDN’T WASH THE PAN PROPERLY. THE WHOLE THING IS RUINED. MIGHT AS WELL THROW IT OUT.” He stood up so fast that his chair squealed against the kitchen floor before toppling over. “IF I’M GOING TO DO ALL THE COOKING, YOU COULD AT LEAST WASH THE DISHES.” Papyrus turned on his heel and marched for the stairs.

“i did,” he heard over his shoulder, annoyed but quiet. Sans knew better than to argue with Papyrus.

For his part, Papyrus pretended he didn’t hear his brother’s grumbling. He was probably right. He probably had washed the pan. Papyrus would have noticed before he started cooking had he not.

Still, picking a fight with Sans was preferable to trying to answer questions he didn’t know the answer to. It was preferable to that initial look of concern Sans had given him as he gagged into the napkin.

He couldn’t sleep. His bones felt tight, ready to crack like mud when it dried out. He desperately needed to replenish his magic reserves. He wouldn’t be much use to the Royal Guard if he didn’t.

He was loathe to admit it even to himself, but he needed a second opinion. The longer he went on like this, the more difficult critical thinking became. But who could he go to for answers?

Undyne?

No. If he hoped to usurp her as Captain, informing her of this newfound and unexplained weakness would be a mistake. She had trained him better than that.

Sans?

No… Just no.

Alphys?

Perhaps. Members of the Royal Guard had gone to her with injuries before. Solving the mystery of an unexplained and insatiable hunger could be in her wheelhouse… Maybe.

He called her cell. The number was gathering digital dust in the depths of his contact list and took him a moment to find.

He dialed. No answer. Perhaps she was still asleep. He sent her a text. (CALL ME.) and waited for a response. None came. He would have to go down there himself, it seemed.

Papyrus focused on making his way to Hotland. The walk there in his current state was daunting, but it felt nice to have a plan. It carried him through the motions of getting dressed for the day and making his way downstairs. “SANS, I HAVE BUSINESS TO ATTEND TO. YOU’LL BE PATROLLING ALONE UNTIL I RETURN.”

It wasn’t quite light out yet. Papyrus expected his lump of a brother to still be in that trash vortex he called a bedroom. As he descended the stairs he noticed a light in the kitchen, however. It seemed Papyrus was up early enough to catch Sans raiding the fridge in some nebulous mealtime between midnight snack and breakfast.

“SANS, DID YOU HEAR ME?. I—” Papyrus poked his head into the kitchen and there he froze.

Sans was standing in front of the open fridge. He kicked it shut and turned his back to it, guiltily. “i heard ya. you’ve got business. i’m supposed to patrol alone. got it… boss? you okay?”

That concerned look was back on Sans’ face, but this time Papyrus couldn’t bring himself to care. The ball of hunger twisted against his spine. Something smelled amazing. What little magic he had in reserve stirred. He felt the ghost of a tongue behind his teeth and the warm wetness of freshly manifested salivary glands.

Food was fuel. If you were going to do anything at all, you should do it right. He was an excellent chef, but not even his finest lasagna had stimulated his appetite like this. Nothing had. Ever.

It smelled spicy and metallic and… distinctly inedible. It smelled like a live wire in a storm.

Papyrus eyed the hands Sans had clasped behind his back. “WHAT ARE YOU EATING?”

Sans shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He sighed and, reluctantly, showed Papyrus his hands.

Mustard. Of course. Papyrus wasn’t sure what else he had expected from the condiment guzzling gremlin. But even so…Papyrus sniffed the air. He took one step closer and then another. The smell got stronger, so did his hunger.

Before he could second-guess himself, he snatched the bottle from Sans, laid down a line of the stuff on his index finger, and shoved it into his mouth.

Regret. Instant, _profound_ regret.

“boss?”

Papyrus spiked the bottle into the floor.

“boss! aw… c’mon.” Sans squatted down and snatched up the bottle, making a face as he straightened back up with it. The lid had come off. He started to replace it but paused, taking a moment to wipe the spilled excess off with his thumb.

Papyrus winced. Hunger stabbed at him again. The foul tang of the mustard lingered on his tongue, but that enticing smell was still there, impossible to ignore.

Sans sucked the mustard from his thumb, rotated the bottle, and began to repeat the process on the other side. This time, Papyrus caught him by the wrist before his hand reached his mouth.

“uh.”

In his periphery, Papyrus could see the puzzled look on Sans’ face. He didn’t ignore it so much as find it completely overridden by a sudden and pressing urge. He took Sans’ hand to his mouth, maneuvering it until the distal phalanx hooked over his bottom teeth. His tongue was still more an idea of the muscle than anything functional. It conformed beneath the phalange anyway, tasting more vile mustard first but then something else beneath it. Something warm but cool like a full body shiver. He swallowed him down to the next joint.

“um.”

With a start, Papyrus jerked Sans’ hand away from his mouth. He might have spiked that into the ground too had it not been attached to the rest of his brother.

“do you want, like… a handjob or something?” Sans asked carefully, absently wiping his hand off on the hem of his t-shirt.

“I’M GOING OUT. THERE’S SOMETHING I NEED TO DO.” Papyrus turned, silently willing his brother to disregard the time that had elapsed between first announcing his departure and doing so again now. “IT WON’T TAKE ME LONG. DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING THIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO SLACK OFF.”

“you sure you’re okay?”

“I MEAN IT, SANS.” He reached the front door and threw it open before marching outside. It banged shut behind him, but didn’t stay that way for long. Over the crunch of his boots in the snow, he heard it open again. He didn’t hear Sans follow him, at least. And he didn’t dare look back.

* * *

The walk felt impossibly long despite paying the ferryman for a ride. By the time he reached Hotland, he was all but dragging his feet, heels kicking up clouds of harsh red dust. If Alphys had simply ignored his call and his text, he was going to dust her… Assuming that he didn’t turn to dust himself in the next five minutes. It felt like a near thing.

Papyrus slammed his fist on the heavy metal door of the lab. It was a boxy, uninviting building that radiated heat like a convection oven. He knew Undyne stopped in here from time to time, but he had no idea how.

“ALPHYS!” Papyrus yelled when no one answered. He knocked again, harder this time, using the side of his fist so that he could really put his back into it.

Still no answer.

He took out his cell. Still no response from Alphys there either. He called her again, tapping his foot as he glared at the door. “I CAN HEAR YOUR PHONE RINGING!” Movement caught his eye. He looked to the left and upward. “I SAW THAT CAMERA MOVE!” He raised a fist to start banging again. “ALPHYS! IF YOU DON’T—”

Papyrus was cut off abruptly as some mechanism in the door loudly clanged and clunked. It opened with laborious slowness, yellow claws quivering with the effort of sliding it on its track. “F-Fine. Fine! Just hurry up and g-get inside.” Alphys stopped pulling before the door was even half open. Her coke-bottle glasses reflected the light from outside. Papyrus couldn’t make out her expression, but he could see that she was motioning him with no small amount of urgency.

“DON’T GIVE ME ORDERS.” Papyrus stood his ground to establish dominance.

Alphys began to slide the door closed again.

Papyrus scrambled inside.

The door banged shut, sending shuddering reverberations through the floor. It was dark inside the lab, much darker than it was outside at any rate. Papyrus felt his eyes brighten to adjust. Alphys stood a few feet away, clutching a section of metal pipe, hands apart and grip firm like she was ready to swing it down on someone’s head. Reflexively, Papyrus summoned a bone into his own hand. Rounded at one end, audibly sharp at the other, scraping against the floor with a screech as it sprang into existence.

Alphys yelped and fumbled the pipe, barely getting a hold on it before it hit the ground. “W-what are y-you-” She paused and looked down at the pipe, likely following his gaze there. “This? You think I’m threatening you?” She barked a laugh, sudden and sardonic. It was a miserable sound. “This isn’t for you.” She perked up. “But… but… m-maybe you could help me? Since you’re already here…?”

“HELP YOU WITH WHAT?” Papyrus scanned the lab. He had given it a cursory glance upon first entering, but now he took in its haphazardly piled clutter and shadowy corners. He didn’t see anything that looked like a threat, but his instincts weren’t at their sharpest.

“Oh, i-it’s, um… Well, I’d rather not go into specifics, but you’ll know it when you see it.” Alphys straightened up as if a literal weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Despite avoiding him all morning, it seemed that she had warmed to the idea of his being here. Unfortunately, even if Papyrus wanted to help (He didn’t.) he wasn’t in any shape to provide the protection she thought his being there would afford her. “Papyrus?”

Papyrus’ vision blurred. He swayed. He tried to put his weight on the bone he had summoned, but it had given up the ghost on being a solid. He fell, right arm hitting the floor first then his forearms. The impact hurt but was nominal next to the hunger pains.

“Are you all right?”

Papyrus heard Alphys walk closer. He didn’t deign to respond to her question. The answer was obvious… and humiliating. He started pushing himself up on unsteady arms.

Alphys offered a hand. Papyrus slapped it away immediately, though at the cost of collapsing again. Alphys sighed. A metallic clanging echoed off the walls as she dropped her length of pipe nearby. “I guess this is why you’re here then… Well, come on. Just… keep an eye on the vents. I think it might be in the vents.”

Papyrus leveraged his weight against the pipe to get to his feet. Reluctantly, he used it as a makeshift crutch. Wordlessly, he followed Alphys.

Alphys poked and prodded. She used something cruel and pneumatic to punch out a sample of bone. She used a hollow needle the size of a drinking straw to extract marrow. She did this multiple times. Papyrus cut her off at three.

“DO YOU ACTUALLY NEED THAT MUCH OR ARE YOU JUST TAKING ENOUGH SO THAT YOU HAVE LEFTOVERS FOR LATER?”

Alphys laughed nervously and backed off. “N-no! That’s not— I can make do with this.”

And so he waited while she worked. Muttering to herself, marching back and forth, fiddling with microscopes, pausing to tap away on a computer and frown at its monitor for several minutes at a time.

Papyrus sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair. It had been a compromise. He had refused to climb up onto the exam table. It looked ominous sitting there, glinting under harsh lamplight and flecked in unidentifiable stains that flaked off on his glove when he touched them. Dried blood or rust. Both maybe. None of the possibilities were encouraging.

Occasionally, his wait was interrupted by heavy echoing thuds emanating from somewhere over his head. Alphys would freeze at the sound, throw a wary look at her surroundings, returning to work once the sounds faded away.

At last she was done. She stepped back from the microscope, wiping her hands on her lab coat with a kind of finality. “Finished.”

“AND?” prompted Papyrus. He had slumped down in the chair, arms crossed sullenly over his chest. To say he was growing impatient would be an understatement.

“I have no idea.” Alphys raised her hands up in warding before he could respond. “This really isn’t my field of expertise. You and your brother are the only skeleton monsters I know. I’m doing my best here.”

“AND DID ‘YOUR BEST’ TELL YOU _ANYTHING_ USEFUL?” Papyrus tried to sound menacing, but he wasn’t really feeling it. It was hard to feel anything over the gnawing hunger.

Alphys cocked her head, thoughtful. “Well, it doesn’t look like it was caused by external factors. Everything looks pretty normal, actually. It seems like some sort of mutation maybe or like… Do skeletons go through puberty?”

“WHAT?”

“Menopause? I don’t know! I don’t know much about skeletons. I told you… Unless… I could take a few more samples…”

“NO.”

Alphys threw her hands up with a huff. “Well, I don’t know then. You seem healthy otherwise. Your magic is low, but genetically… I’d say it’s just some sort of transition in your life-cycle, but I have no frame of reference, so— Wait, Sans is older than you, right?”

“HE IS,” Papyrus answered slowly, carefully.

“Well, to the best of your knowledge, has he ever experience an inexplicable, unquenchable hunger?”

“INEXPLICABLE? YES. UNQUENCHABLE? …ALSO YES, BUT NOT LIKE THIS. HE ISN’T WHAT I WOULD CALL A PICKY EATER.”

“It might be worth asking him about anyway.”

“ANY OTHER BRILLIANT ADVICE, ROYAL SCIENTIST?” He was being snide, but Alphys rocked back on her heels, gaze going distant as she considered the question.

“There’s one other place that I suppose…” Alphys trailed off, turning a thoughtful look to the door. “We could look there for answers.”

Sitting for a spell had recharged Papyrus’ batteries for a bit. He didn’t need the pipe to lean on, instead letting Alphys wield it as she led the way deeper into the lab.

Despite the heat outside, it was drafty in the lab. The cold didn’t bother Papyrus, but the way the flow of air jostled things did. Metal trays of equipment rattled, cobwebs near the ceiling swayed. The stale breeze carried chemical scents. Bleach, ammonia, others he couldn’t readily identify. They took an elevator down at some point. Muzak pumped through tinny overhead speakers did little to drown out the groans of long-neglected machinery. Alphys might be the Royal Scientist, but she clearly wasn’t getting much royal funding.

The elevator lurched. Papyrus leaned against the wall for support. Even if they did figure out what was wrong with him, he might still die down here.

Eventually, they reached their destination, the elevator all but dropping the last few feet before coming to a stop. The doors opened, and Alphys stepped out, seemingly not fazed by the bumpy journey down. Papyrus followed but kept one hand between the doors. He didn’t want to commit just yet. “WHAT’S DOWN HERE?”

He frowned at his own question. It felt like he had asked it before. It felt like Alphys had answered him.

“His old office.” Alphys stopped, waiting for Papyrus to join her as she regarded him with an appraising sort of look. “It’s hard to hold in your mind if you stop thinking about him for too long. I get that too.”

“STOP THINKING ABOUT WHO?”

Alphys continued down the hall. It was darker than the rest of the lab, dustier. Any that was saying something. The walls felt too close together. Exposed wires hung from loose ceiling tiles.

“I ASKED YOU A QUESTION.”

Alphys stopped at the end of the corridor. Her shoulders hunched, followed by a jangling sound. Papyrus had quite the advantage on her in height. He peered over her head. She was fumbling with a set of keys. “It’s more efficient to just show you.”

Papyrus crossed his arms. He tapped his foot. But then Alphys shoved the key in the hole and the door creaked open. He stopped.

“OH.”

Gaster’s office wasn’t terribly large. It had perhaps been intended as a supply closet upon its construction. Filing cabinets and shelves packed tight enough that they bowed in the middle lined the walls. A computer desk gathered dust in the corner, so wedged in that one would need to climb over it to sit at it.

“I know it’s a lot to sort through, but he’d know better than I would. I mean… he made you, right?”

Papyrus chose not to respond. Gaster had made a great many children. He and his brother had not been the first and it was unlikely that they had been the last. His memories of Gaster were slippery, but he recalled the long absences, the general malaise when he _was_ around. Papyrus recalled talk of other worlds, talk of “more interesting projects.” Other brothers, perhaps. Ones not quite so boring.

Well, the joke was on him. Who was boring _now?_ Papyrus swallowed down his discomfort and got to work.

Alphys didn’t hang around for long. A crash from above had her snatching the pipe back from where she had sat it down and scrambling back towards the elevator. That suited Papyrus fine. He would sooner be alone with what was in the filing cabinets. Journal entries… photographs… memories better forgotten. It was personal.

As much as he loathed the idea, it was also something that he needed to speak with Sans about. Sans was older. Ostensibly, he had more memories of Gaster. He also knew more about this nerd nonsense than Papyrus did. Granted, it had been a while since he had seen his brother express an interest in anything scientific. What motivation he’d had for the subject seemed to have more or less left when Gaster did.

Papyrus found a faux-leather portfolio bag. It was faded and frayed but served his purposes just fine once he shook the shriveled spider husks from the lining.

He stuffed it with anything that looked relevant. There was a lot. More than he could fit, but he could always come back. The contents of the portfolio would keep Gaster from slipping his mind, but he managed to find a felt-tip pen that wasn’t bone dry and took a moment to etch the name onto his ulna.

Papyrus found Alphys back upstairs. She was near the entrance again, up on a ladder. She had unscrewed a vent cover and was leaning inside, a flashlight in hand. She screamed when Papyrus said her name, fumbling the flashlight and tripping from the rung of the ladder she was perched on.

Papyrus could have caught her. He didn’t. But he could have.

“ALPHYS, WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT _VAMPIRES_?” He enunciated the last word, not overly familiar with the term.

Alphys groaned as she picked herself up from the floor. She dusted herself off and adjusted her glasses. The flashlight she had been holding was rolling away, its light bouncing off surrounding clutter. She went after it. “Vampires? I always thought they were overrated. I’m more a werewolf fan myself. Big and muscular and… um… W-why do you ask?”

Papyrus showed Alphys his findings. Some of them anyway. She didn’t need to see the especially private bits.

Alphys listened with rapt interest and a nose bleeding slightly from her fall. She was muttering to herself, the muttering punctuated by wiping her nose occasionally on her lab coat. It wasn’t the only bloodstain there, Papyrus noted. He wondered if all the stains came from her. Doubtful.

“I suppose it’s possible…” Alphys amended finally. “Gaster was a fan of the genre. There’s still quite a bit of media left floating around the lab from when he worked here… movies… literature.”

“HE _LIKED THE GENRE?_ ” sneered Papyrus. “LAST I CHECKED, A FIELD OF SCIENCE WAS NOT A _GENRE_.”

“Well…” Alphys trailed off with a grimace. “Vampires aren’t actually… real, strictly speaking. At least not in this universe. There are creatures with vampiric characteristics, certainly. But as far as monsters go… you’d be the first. _If_ you are. Which, you might be. Vampire-inspired anyway. It’s not all that unlikely. I’ve seen his work. It sounds like something he might do.”

“WHY?”

“ _Why_?” Alphys scoffed. “Why not? Dr. Gaster was a brilliant monster. Sometimes you must do science simply for the sake of science. You don’t ask why.”

A screech from the vent startled them both. It was an ear-piercing, guttural sound followed by a crashing that grew fainter as whatever it was in there scrabbled away.

Papyrus motioned emphatically to the vent. “ _WHY_?!”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, okay?! I was bored!” Alphys clutched at her pipe. “H-he made lots of y-you right? In other universes? Other alternate realities? M-maybe he was bored too?”

Papyrus considered her words. “NO,” he decided. “IMPOSSIBLE. THIS IS ALL SOME PART OF A GREATER PLAN… SOME SORT OF SCHEME OF HIS. I’M SURE OF IT.”

“If you say so.”

“I DO.” Papyrus began shoving papers back into the portfolio he had appropriated from Gaster’s office. “HOW DO WE DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT I AM A… _VAMPIRE_?”

“Gosh. I’m not sure. I’d have to take a closer look at his work, try to figure out what mythos he was inspired by.” Alphys smiled. “This could be exciting.” She looked to Papyrus and immediately flinched, her smile fading. “First things first, we should figure out whether blood sates your hunger.”

Alphys inclined her head thoughtfully. “Fresh blood would be best. Preferably, from a willing donor. Of course, we’ll need to find a monster that bleeds first.”

“YOU BLEED.”

Alphys blinked at Papyrus. She put a trembling hand to her snout, touching the dried blood there. “I d-do, don’t I?” She smiled nervously. “I guess I could get my phlebotomy equipment. Or… You don’t have fangs exactly, but your teeth are rather sharp.” She swallowed. A pale pink began to color her cheeks. “If you really wanted… Y-you could….” She eased her lab coat from her shoulder and inclined her head again, exposing her neck this time.

“WHAT? OH. GOD… NO. DISGUSTING.”

Alphys snapped her coat shut, taking the time to button it up for good measure. “F-fine. I’m trying to help, but fine. You’re awfully picky for someone who’s supposedly starving.”

That was true. Regardless… “YOU DON’T SMELL LIKE SOMETHING I COULD EAT ANYWAY.”

Alphys looked more hurt by that than she probably should have been. “What _would_ smell appetizing?”

Papyrus thought of Sans. He winced. “I HAVE TO GO. I MAY BE BACK LATER. ANSWER YOUR PHONE THIS TIME.”

Alphys grumbled something unkind in response, but Papyrus couldn’t make out what it was. As he walked to the door, his thoughts were on a smell both metallic and spicy. His thoughts were on a familiar hand and the shape a thumb pressed against his dormant tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand, I'm back with another chapter.
> 
> I'm going to tweak the tags. That will probably happen again in the future, so keep an eye on those or my author's notes for any warnings. I always feel odd tagging for certain things before they happen in the plot. Sometimes it feels like a spoiler or I change my mind and turn the plot in a new direction.
> 
> Anyway, in this particular chapter things get more explicit. I think the Fellcest here is pretty typical of the AU, but fair warning: I haven't written it as the healthiest relationship.
> 
> Also some gory imagery towards the end because... vampires.

Had Sans picked today to be a useless layabout, it would have made Papyrus’ life easier. He stopped at their home briefly, checked to see if, perhaps, his brother was still in bed.

But no. He was useless at being useless. Disappointing but not surprising.

Papyrus began his trek into the woods, along the winding path that led to his and his brother’s stations. He trudged around traps, careful to give the stations of his coworkers a wide berth. The dogs didn’t need to see him in his weakened state. He thought he was projecting his usual capable and collected self, but he couldn’t be sure. His head swam and his feet felt heavy. If he stumbled and pitched forward face first into the snow, that would be more than a little difficult to hand-wave away.

Which happened.

Twice.

He threw a quick look around both times, making sure that he was alone and unobserved. No onlookers. So far, so good… relatively speaking.

Papyrus felt a swell of relief when Sans’ station came into view and, subsequently, Sans with it. That relief quickly turned to outrage when he noticed the way his brother was slumped forward, his head resting in his folded arms. If he was just going to sleep, he might as well have stayed at home and saved Papyrus the walk.

Papyrus squared his shoulders. He made a point to pick his feet up as he rounded the station to get at Sans, powering through his exhaustion with indignation. “SANS!” Papyrus slammed the portfolio down by his brother’s folded arms.

Sans sat up with a startled grunt, a sound that tapered off into shrill surprise when Papyrus caught him by the back of his collar.

“USELESS.” Papyrus felt some of the fight leave Sans as he realized who he was. “WHAT IF I HAD BEEN A HUMAN, HMM? OR ONE OF THOSE IDIOT DOGS?”

The stool Sans had been seated on toppled as he got to his feet. He was currently working his fingers between the front of his collar and his neck in an effort to keep from being strangled. “s-sorry, boss,” he choked out. ”sorry.”

Papyrus released him. He listened to the crunch as he hit the snow followed by a string of muttered swear words as he righted the toppled stool. “I CAN’T TRUST YOU ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES.” Papyrus took a seat on the stool just as Sans started to rise. Seeing that his seat was taken, he promptly sat himself right back down in the snow.

“you were gone a hell of a lot longer than five minutes,” Sans grumbled, rubbing at the vertebrae beneath the collar as he sat cross-legged and slouched by Papyrus’ boots. “where’d you go?”

“I WENT TO SEE ALPHYS.”

“what? why?”

“I NEEDED TO—” Papyrus paused. He sniffed the air. “YOU DON’T SMELL AS GOOD AS YOU DID THIS MORNING.”

Sans blinked up at his brother, waiting several long seconds for him to continue. “sorry?”

“FORGET IT.” If Sans no longer smelled delectable, that both complicated and simplified matters. First things first, however. He reached for the portfolio and began to open it. “I WENT TO HIS OFFICE.”

With a groan, Sans clambered to his feet, cracking his spine, likely a bit stiff from his fall. “whose office?”

That was… a good fucking question. Papyrus turned to the portfolio. He began to remove its contents in the hope that a clue would be there, but then he saw the edge of something written in black ink peeking out from beneath his glove. He didn’t have to pull the glove off to read what was written there. The memory came back to him on its own.

Papyrus turned to look at his brother before he said the name. “Gaster.” He watched Sans’ bored expression shift. His eye-sockets widened; his eyelights receded to anxious pinpricks.

“oh.” Sans’ right hand crossed to his left elbow, shoulders slouching, closing in on himself ever so slightly. “right…”

In his mind’s eye, Papyrus saw the last time he had been in the same room as Gaster. They were at opposite ends of the basement-level lab, Papyrus angry, Gaster pretending he was too busy with a report to notice. Sans stood in one corner like a potted plant, a passive observer. Papyrus had stormed off shortly after that knowing full well that he would have to return for his things. Potted plants, especially, did not fare well when left unattended in basements.

Papyrus shook his head. He turned his thoughts to the present and faced the portfolio. “THERE IS SOMETHING I WANT YOU TO TAKE A LOOK AT.”

Sans stepped up to his station, standing at Papyrus’ right hand as he spread out his findings. “what is it?”

“I SAID I WANTED YOU TO _LOOK_ AT THIS. DID I SAY I WANTED TO SIT HERE AND READ ALOUD TO YOU? NO. USE YOUR EYES.”

Sans picked up one of the pages. He squinted at it. “god, i forgot how shitty his handwriting was.” He lowered the page and patted down his jacket. Papyrus watched him shove his hands into his pockets. The left fist came out with Grillby’s receipts, the right with mustard packets and dryer lint. God only knew the last time that particular article of clothing had seen the inside of a laundry room.

Papyrus opened his mouth to hurry him along. “got it,” Sans said first, getting the words out in a rush before he could be scolded.

The glasses he pulled from his pocket had seen better days. One of the lenses was cracked and the other had to be scratched all to hell. A coincidental artifact, Papyrus realized, of time spent helping Gaster. Surely, it would be easier to keep on squinting.

Sans held the glasses to his sockets with one hand and rifled through the portfolio’s contents with the other. “so… is there some kind of, like… context here?”

“I BELIEVE THIS MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE DOCTOR’S TRUE INTENTIONS WHEN CREATING US… WELL, ME ANYWAY. I’M STILL NOT ENTIRELY SURE WHAT THE POINT OF _YOU_ WAS.”

Sans kept scanning the pages, fanning them out over the surface of the station before leaning over the lot of them. “oh wow.”

Papyrus nodded once, slowly and somberly. He knew what Sans was feeling.

“oh wow,” Sans repeated, louder this time and laughing. He slapped the table with an open hand as the laughter verged on hysterical.

Maybe Papyrus didn’t know what Sans was feeling.

“what a fucking nerd.” Sans lowered the glasses so that he could wipe the tears from his sockets. “thank you for showing me this, boss. this is-” He slapped the table, doubling over with laughter again. “vampires! what trashy undernet website do you think he got this from? was this why the printer was always running out of black ink? man, he really didn’t give a shit with this universe, did he?”

Papyrus snaked an arm out and gathered up the papers. “THIS EFFECTS OUR LIVES, SANS. FORGIVE ME IF I DON’T SEE THE HUMOR IN… STOP LAUGHING.”

“sorry.” Sans took a step back from the station, wiping more tears from his eyes. “don’t mean to drive you batty.”

“STOP.” Papyrus waited for Sans to get the last of the laughter from his system before continuing. “ARE YOU… HUNGRY AT ALL?”

Sans shoved his hands in his pockets, putting his glasses away in the process. He shrugged. “sure. i could eat.”

“NOT LIKE—” Papyrus stopped, huffed, and rephrased his question. “HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED ANY SORT OF… UNNATURAL HUNGER?”

“unnatural…” Sans trailed off. His mouth formed a silent, ‘oh.’ The smile was gone at least. “you think that maybe you’re— that’s what this morning was about.”

Papyrus looked away. He didn’t want to think about what had transpired this morning. Yes, he permitted Sans to pleasure him on occasion. But that hadn’t been him this morning. He wasn’t anyone so pathetic, so desperate. That wasn’t his place in the two-person hierarchy of their home. “YOU SMELLED GOOD. YOU SMELLED LIKE SOMETHING I COULD…”

“eat?” Sans’ voice sounded slightly more distant than it had a moment previous. Papyrus looked over to see that he had taken several steps back toward the edge of the woods. “well… shit.”

“INDEED.” Papyrus sniffed the air. He thought he could smell something faintly, something savory. It still wasn’t anything like it had been in the morning. “BUT THAT SEEMS TO HAVE PASSED.”

“are you sure?”

Papyrus couldn’t help but notice that Sans was now standing at least fifteen feet away. “OF COURSE I’M SURE. GET BACK HERE.”

“how do you know?”

“BECAUSE I’M NOT TRYING TO EAT YOU.” Papyrus gave his cowardly brother a dismissive wave. At 1HP, he didn’t fault Sans for being cautious. What he didn’t take kindly to was the fact that he was doubting him. “BESIDES, VAMPIRES DRINK BLOOD, DON’T THEY? WHAT WOULD I EVEN EAT. YOU HAVE NO BLOOD.”

“yeah… right…”

“NOW COME BACK HERE AND TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW.”

“i think i’m good over here, boss. no offense.”

Papyrus wasn’t offended so much as he was startled. So much was out of his control at the moment, and Sans was picking right now to defy him? He stood up quickly, intending to be menacing. Instead it just made him dizzy. As he waited for his vision to clear, he saw Sans take another step back. “COME BACK HERE.”

“maybe you should sit down.”

“THIS IS A PRIVATE CONVERSATION. I’M NOT GOING TO STAND HERE AND SHOUT AT YOU FROM TEN FEET AWAY. SOMEONE MIGHT HEAR.”

“then maybe you shouldn’t yell about how it’s a private conversation. look, seriously, sit down.”

“DON’T GIVE ME ORDERS.” But then gravity made sure that Papyrus followed Sans’ whether he wanted to or not. He hit the snow. Hard.

“boss!”

He was listening to him now, at least. Papyrus heard his brother close the distance between them. He heard him drop to his knees and put a tentative hand on his shoulder. “boss, are you okay?”

“DO I LOOK OKAY?” Papyrus snarled back at him, reaching up to grab his forearms through his jacket. Sans began to rise as Papyrus did. He knew better than to offer a hand. He stayed as still as he could while Papyrus leaned on him for support.

Papyrus didn’t make it all the way to his feet. He stopped on his knees, his hands tightening around Sans’ arms as he pulled him down to eye level.

“boss?”

“SHUT UP.” Papyrus could smell the mustard on his breath when he spoke. That wasn’t what he’d caught a whiff of mere moments ago. It wasn’t what he had smelled this morning. For his own peace of mind, he wanted to know he wasn’t imagining things. Papyrus gathered Sans’ coat in his hands, fists bunched up near the hood, grabbing some of his shirt with it.

Sans struggled to hold himself up. Papyrus was on his knees, forcing Sans into an awkward sort of lunge if he didn’t want to break away completely just yet. His jaw worked at words that he never quite verbalized. Papyrus had told him to shut up and, finally, he seemed to be following simple commands again.

He leaned into Sans, putting his face in the space between head and scapulae. He pushed the collar up and slid the gathered fabric of Sans’ turtleneck down. He breathed deep. Already, he could feel his soft palate forming. There it was. That spicy thunderstorm smell.

Papyrus could feel his tongue like a phantom muscle. It was tracing the shape of individual vertebrae when it developed mass.

Sans sucked in a breath and leaned away from Papyrus. It was a noncommittal attempt at escape. All he really ended up doing was presenting more of his neck. It was torture. Sucking on a hard candy you wanted to bite. It did nothing to sate his needs, but it was still… delectable. His teeth grazed Sans’ cervical spine. His tongue hungrily threaded his clavicle.

“w-why don’t we pick this back up at home boss?” Sans’ voice trembled slightly, at least half an octave higher with nerves. “we can— we could, um, take a shortcut.”

His arms were rigid beneath Papyrus’ hands. He was holding him tight. Too tight, probably. And for what? What did he think he was going to do here?

Papyrus eased up, pushing off of Sans to get to his feet. “WELL, HURRY UP THEN,” he snapped, pointedly looking elsewhere. He swallowed the saliva still pooling in his mouth. “LET’S GET HOME.”

* * *

There were nights spent watching television with Sans that Papyrus enjoyed more than he would ever admit. Sans sitting on the carpet at his feet because Papyrus wouldn’t let him eat popcorn on the couch. Falling asleep during a commercial break, head lolling to rest on Papyrus’ knee.

Now Sans was above Papyrus. A full floor above him, leaning over the second-floor banister to yell down to his brother on the sofa below. “are you sure you can make it to tonight? we could go to the lab. or, hey, i could tell alphys to get her tail down here, make a house call.”

“AND WHAT WOULD THAT ACCOMPLISH?”

“peace of mind? shit, i dunno.”

“IT’S FINE,” Papyrus said through his teeth, speaking in a manner that assured the listener that none of this was fine. He was starving. His brother was useless. Their father was the worst kind of absentee parent, the kind that leaves behind troubling genetic mysteries but no contact information.

Sans hadn’t had the answers he had been hoping for. He had a dearth of answers, really. It bordered on suspicious.

Gaster’s name was written on Papyrus’ bones in ink and written inside them with something altogether more permanent. The longer he sat with that knowledge, the more unspooled memories wound their way back to him.

Papyrus had done the same with Sans, though his brother had danced out of his reach when he came at him with a pen. He’d stood what he deemed a safe distance away and did it himself. Both arms, his left hand. He’d stopped short of hanging a sign with Gaster’s name around his neck. Though, he did find a lanyard in a kitchen drawer that served much the same purpose.

And, staring at the paper pendulum swinging in its laminated sheath one floor up, Papyrus had to wonder if that hadn’t originally come from the Hotland lab too.

Sans _had_ to be wondering similar thoughts if not the same ones. The same memories had to be popping back into his head as innocuous things jogged them.

A coffee cup left on a counter had only moments ago reminded Papyrus of the time that Gaster had spoken wistfully of past creations. Usually at least _one_ of them was smart, he’d said, lamenting the lack of a lab assistant that wasn’t Alphys.

Sans had kept his head down over his work; Papyrus had hurled a nearby mug at a wall; the whole while Gaster had watched on impassively. He never did manage to get a rise out of their creator. Gaster was an observer. Was he observing now, Papyrus wondered?

“we could go now. always someone around grillby’s lookin’ to make a buck. a few of them might give you a pint for a pint.” Sans chuckled. “you should probably get _your_ pint first, though.”

“WE’RE WAITING.” All that walking around from Hotland and back had taken a lot out of Papyrus. Upon arriving home, he had spent the better part of an hour reading through the data in the portfolio. Screw Gaster. Sans might be an idiot, but _he_ wasn’t. He’d done his homework. “I’M A CREATURE OF THE NIGHT NOW. WE’LL LEAVE AT SUNDOWN.”

“we’re underground, boss.”

Sprawled out, skull resting on the back of the sofa, Papyrus opened his eyes to glare up at his brother. “I KNOW THAT!”

“not sure we’re really beholden to day-night cycles.”

“THE SUN IS UP RIGHT NOW. I CAN SENSE IT.”

Sans raised his hands, palms out in surrender.”i ain’t arguing with ya. i’m sure you’re right. the sun is up. somewhere on the planet, right now, the sun is definitely up.”

“DO NOT PATRONIZE ME, SANS.”

“i’m just…” ‘Worried’ was the word that finished that sentence, but Sans trailed off instead. “i could go. you could wait here, and i could head out there.”

“NO,” Papyrus said, firmly. The word overlapped the end of Sans’ offer. “I’M IN NO STATE TO COME BAIL YOU OUT OF TROUBLE RIGHT NOW. WE’LL GO TOGETHER. TONIGHT.”

Upstairs, Sans sighed and grumbled something that Papyrus couldn’t quite make out. Before he could ask, Sans continued. “well, is there anything i _am_ allowed to do?”

“YOU COULD STOP BEING A COWARD AND COME DOWNSTAIRS.”

Sans barked a skeptical laugh. “no offense, but i really don’t feel like you givin’ my bones another taste test right now.”

Despite his protests, Papyrus heard the stairs creak as he came down them. He heard soft footsteps on the carpet and raised his head up to see Sans standing near the television. He kept his distance but looked torn about it. His eyelights moved over his brother appraisingly.

“you feelin’ any better than you were?”

“NO.” If Papyrus could push his incessant hunger down long enough to get a few hours of sleep, he thought he might. He wasn’t feeling any better yet, though. “BUT YOU COULD HELP ME TAKE MY MIND OFF IT.”

Sans looked confused momentarily but only momentarily. He snorted, gold tooth glinting in the light from the ceiling fan as he grinned a sardonic grin. “seriously? now?”

“NOW. SERIOUSLY.” Papyrus sat up straight. He nodded at the floor, to the empty space between his boots.

Sans wound one of his jacket’s drawstrings around a bony finger. For a handful of seconds, he rocked heel to toe, heel to toe. He was hesitating, but Papyrus wasn’t bothered. At least not about this. Sans would come. He could already see the dull red glow of a Pavlovian tongue in that thick skull of his.

They had an arrangement, a system that had worked for years now.

At least it worked for Papyrus. He couldn’t be bothered finding sexual gratification elsewhere. He was too busy for that. And other monsters… other monsters didn’t always give him the deference he was due.

Sans knelt at his feet and flinched when Papyrus lightly touched his jawbone, reclining his head so as to make eye-contact. He wasn’t sure what it meant that he still didn’t smell as delectable as he had this morning. The sight of his throat exposed stimulated his salivary glands into existence anyway. Not a weak point for skeletons, but a vulnerable spot for many monsters.

Granted, every spot was a vulnerable one for his brother. He needed to be careful.

“ARE YOU REALLY SO AFRAID OF ME, SANS?”

“always, boss.”

Papyrus leaned back again, willing the tension from his body. He felt Sans unbuckle his belt then open his pants with tentative hands. There was nothing there yet, a fact Papyrus had already been able to feel.

“boss?”

He didn’t have to elaborate. Papyrus could tell from the inflection of the word that he was asking for permission. And Papyrus gave it, nodding once.

The edge of the sofa cushion between Papyrus’ legs dipped slightly as Sans leaned into it. One hand rested on Papyrus’ knee as the other worked its way beneath his battle body, fingers grazing his SOUL before he got a proper grip on it. Papyrus suppressed a shiver as it was eased down and out.

Sans sat back on his heels, reverently cradling Papyrus’ SOUL. It glowed pale white in his palms, casting soft light over Sans as he considered it for several seconds. Sometimes just holding it was enough. The SOUL was sensitive.

But nothing happened. Not yet.

Sans moved both of his thumbs at once, sliding them lightly across the surface of Papyrus’ SOUL. It yielded a little, supplely regaining its original rounded shape when the pressure passed.

Papyrus exhaled slowly. He spread his arms on the back of the couch as he reclined, digging his fingers into the tops of the cushions to keep from responding audibly.

It felt like a light touch down his spine, hot breath on his tailbone. Sans stroked his SOUL again. It began to sweat, beads of red adding color to the colorless. It dripped, viscous, smearing some when Sans' thumbs pushed through it. But, stubbornly, Papyrus’ SOUL remained more white than red.

Perhaps this was a mistake given how drained he was already. The bones were willing, but his SOUL was weak.

Sans seemed to be coming to the same conclusions. He looked up at Papyrus, giving him a questioning look even though he had to know that he’d never get him to admit to weakness, to admit that now was a bad time.

“ah, well.” Sans leaned forward again, gingerly replacing Papyrus’ SOUL. “no worries, boss. what’s white and red all over?”

Perhaps Sans could stand to be a little more afraid of him if he still felt comfortable cracking jokes. Papyrus ignored the question in case he encouraged him, focusing on what Sans was doing instead. He shoved his hand under his turtleneck and brought it back out gripping his own SOUL. Unlike Papyrus’, it dripped with so much red it was already running down his sleeve.

Sans peeled his SOUL like an orange, kneading the ecto into his palm as he went. Eventually, he had a malleable sphere of red. Papyrus watched him shudder as he set his own SOUL aside and reached again to his pelvis. Papyrus felt his bones absorb the ectoflesh as its own. Not nearly enough magic to make up for what his system was lacking, but plenty for utilitarian purposes. It took on the deeper hue of Papyrus’ magic as Sans coaxed it into a more phallic shape.

Sans sat back on his heels once more and looked up at Papyrus with that particularly pathetic expression he wore sometimes. Expectant, hopeful, waiting to be told, even indirectly, that he had done a good job. If he he had a tail, it would be wagging.

Papyrus said nothing. He leaned forward and took Sans by the collar, listening to his breath hitch when he gave it a sharp tug. The smells of ecto overpowered more vitally appetizing smells, at least. Hot and cold simultaneously, a familiar eucalyptus scent that Papyrus associated with a release of pent up tension.

The spikes on Sans’ collar were sharp. Papyrus ran his finger along the row of them, landing on one duller than the rest. The fake gold had been worn off to reveal cheap pewter beneath. Papyrus unscrewed the top, leaving behind just a stud punched through the leather. He unscrewed that next.

Sans took another slow and shuddering breath. He licked the ecto he hadn’t transferred to Papyrus from his fingers, letting it absorb back into his own magic system. He left his tongue out afterward and held very still as Papyrus punched the stud through it. He barely winced when the surface of his ecto was skewered. They had done this before. Enough times that Sans’ magic should have known to manifest with the hole for the barbell already.

It probably did. Sans probably just chose to override his instincts because he thought Papyrus liked it. And, if that was the case, he was right.

Papyrus leaned back again, and Sans took him into his mouth. The cool menthol heat of his tongue, the rounded solidity of the stud in the middle. He started at the head of his newly sculpted cock and moved to the base. Papyrus could feel himself pressing up against the thin membrane of a newly formed throat.

Sans leaned in between his legs, gripping his knees. On the carpet, his SOUL dripped red, creating a widening pool like candle drippings around a votive burning bright. He’d have to make sure that got cleaned later. Right now, he rolled his hips as Sans worked his way back down. His tongue lingered, the stud finding the flesh there yielding, his sex mutable. Papyrus couldn’t see it sprawled on the couch like he was, but he could feel the spirals Sans drew with his tongue. He felt the peaks and valleys and the shapes like profane sigils.

Papyrus put a hand on the back of Sans’ skull. _**He felt fingers crack it open. He saw the eggshell edges of it, a cup of swirling magic waiting for him to take a drink.** _ He pushed him down. Sans gagged slightly as Papyrus’ cock bumped up against the membrane of his throat again. His hands tightened on his brother’s knees. _**Papyrus grabbed Sans’ hands and squeezed until they shattered. He sucked the marrow from the delicate shards left behind.** _

Sans swallowed. His throat contracted. He didn’t fight Papyrus. He let his brother use him. He always did.

**_Sans was on his back, eying Papyrus nervously but passive regardless. Still as Papyrus crouched on top of him, as he tore away his ectoflesh throat, as he bit hard into the bones beneath and tasted something… something… something…_ **

_**Wonderful.** _

Papyrus climaxed. Sans choked again, wetly this time. Papyrus shuddered with the aftershocks of the orgasm, releasing Sans a moment later when he came to his senses.

Sans fell back onto his ass. He coughed and rubbed the sleeve of his jacket across his mouth. “guess i should have thrown these in the wash weeks ago anyway,” he grumbled to himself, pulling up the hem of his turtleneck to frown at the ejaculate glowing faintly through his ribs and dripping down his spine.

“GO UPSTAIRS.”

“huh?” Sans let the hem of his turtleneck drop. He blinked at his brother, uncomprehending.

“FINE.” Papyrus stood. The ecto on his pelvis had been absorbed once he was spent. Though it didn’t curb his hunger, it did give him the burst of energy he needed to storm dramatically from a room. “I’LL GO THEN.” He stomped past his brother and toward the stairs. “I’LL BE BACK DOWN AT NIGHTFALL. MAKE SURE THAT YOU’RE READY TO GO BY THEN, AND MAKE SURE THAT THIS MESS IS CLEANED UP.”

Papyrus marched up the stairs and didn’t stop until he had entered his room and slammed the door shut behind him. He leaned against it. He slid down to the floor. He tried very hard not to think about eating his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate any and all comments! They're super encouraging. Don't be shy. I don't care if you don't have much to say. Comments let me know that there's demand for more chapters and brighten my day.
> 
> Also feel free to come follow or chat with me over on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/Missus_Id


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! I thought this one would be my shortest chapter yet. Spoilers: it wasn’t.
> 
> Also! Wonderful, talented artist ShironuK made an AWESOME cover for the fic which everyone should see if they haven’t already: https://twitter.com/ShironuK/status/1290278436821282822

“they’ll think i wanna suck their dick.”

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, SANS? DON’T BE ABSURD.”

“why can’t i just ask someone for their blood. there’s this one dude grillz won’t let back in until he pays his tab. he’d open an artery for 5g, I bet.”

Papyrus scoffed. His brother was being ridiculous. They had discussed this before leaving home. Sans had expressed his doubts then, but Papyrus had been confident he had explained why his plan was the only feasible one. That Sans was fighting him on this _again_ right as they were about to put that plan into action was absurd.

“I’M NOT PAYING TO DRINK THE BLOOD OF SOME ALCOHOLIC DEGENERATE LIVING ON THE STREET.”

Papyrus glanced down at his brother, giving him a frown. He already knew what he was going to say next. “I’M NOT BEING PICKY. I’M PRACTICAL. I MUST DO AS MY ANCESTORS DID. I MUST HUNT MY PREY. I MUST CHOOSE SOMEONE I AM PREPARED TO KILL.”

“please don’t kill anyone boss.”

“I’M NOT SETTING OUT TO KILL ANYONE,” Papyrus snapped. This they had discussed as well. “BUT ACCIDENTS HAPPEN.”

“that’s real encouraging, boss.”

“SHUT UP AND GET IN THERE.” Papyrus nodded to the bar across the thoroughfare. It was a glowing beacon in the dark and the snow. Through the window, Papyrus could see that the place was bustling with potential meal tickets. Just the idea of finally having something to sate his terrible hunger lit a fire in him. He gave Sans a sharp nudge to hurry him along.

Sans stumbled forward a couple of steps, but he went no further than that. He turned back to Papyrus with the same stubborn expression he’d worn at the house, head inclined, arms folded over his chest. “i dunno, boss.”

“WHAT IS THERE NOT TO KNOW?” Papyrus was finding it difficult to keep his voice down. The plan had been for him to keep to the shadows. He couldn’t go in there himself. The residents of Snowdin all feared and respected him. They would be on guard with him around, and he needed the element of surprise. “GO IN, FIND A MONSTER THAT BLEEDS, LURE THEM OUTSIDE. IT’S SIMPLE. EVEN YOU CAN’T FUCK THIS UP.”

“yeah… no, i get that.” Sans scratched at the back of his skull, pointedly focusing elsewhere as he spoke to Papyrus. “i’m not sure we can pull this off for three square meals a day, though. the underground ain’t that big. someone’s going to catch on eventually.”

“WE’LL WORRY ABOUT THAT LATER.” From the way that Sans opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, Papyrus could see that he had something else to say. “NO ONE HERE WANTS YOU TO SUCK THEIR DICK.”

“really? because you’re here, and you asked me to suck your dick like three hours ago, so…”

“I DON’T NEED THIS SASS RIGHT NOW. GO!”

Sans grumbled but finally went. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and trudged across the thoroughfare, sneakers leaving footprints in the fresh snow. It was falling hard tonight. That was likely a good thing. It would make it more difficult to spot him and easier to cover up any sort of… mess that might occur tonight.

Papyrus shuddered. Despite the bravado, he was uncertain. Had he truly thought this out enough? Were his ideas too clouded by his hunger to filter out the good ones?

He hadn’t spent much time briefing Sans. He had swept downstairs and hurried him out the door as soon as it got dark. Had he given his brother’s objections enough thought? Was he being too rash? Was this a mistake?

No. Surely not. Now _he_ was the one being absurd.

Papyrus took a step back and then another. He leaned against the trunk of a pine tree. And he watched. And he waited.

He couldn’t expect Sans to go in and pick out a victim like the least bruised tomato from a grocer bin. It would take him at least ten minutes… Maybe fifteen.

Through the window, Papyrus could see that Sans had made it to the bar. He leaned against it and raised a hand, waving Grillby down for service as if this were any other night. So good so far.

Fifteen minutes later, Sans was in a booth with monsters that Papyrus knew by appearance but not by name.

Twenty minutes later he was at the same booth, ordering another round. The other monsters at the table were laughing raucously. A tussle had broken out briefly. One of their number had been banished, presumably because he’d been mooching off the table’s communal pitcher of beer without contributing any cash of his own. A bottle had been smashed over his head before Grillby himself had come around the counter, poised to get involved. He’d pulled himself together and left pretty quickly after that.

And now you’d never know there had been a single wrinkle in the evening. A bunny monster beside Sans was sitting progressively closer to him, slouching further down in the booth the more she drank. Smoke curled from a cigarette between her fingers. She was offering Sans a drag when Papyrus called.

Sans waved away smoke and looked down at his phone on the table. For several infuriatingly long seconds, he had the look of someone considering letting it go to voicemail. But then he picked it up. A din of noise came through the tinny speaker, loud enough that Papyrus held the phone back a few inches.

“hey, boss,” drawled Sans, not drunk but audibly verging on tipsy. Oh, they were going to have some words about this later. “what’s up?”

“I DON’T KNOW, SANS. WHAT _IS_ UP? I’M OUT HERE WAITING, IF YOU’VE FORGOTTEN. I SENT YOU IN THERE FOR A REASON, NOT SO THAT YOU COULD GET WASTED WITH A BUNCH OF LOWLIFES— WHO ARE CLEARLY USING YOU FOR A FEW FREE DRINKS, BY THE WAY. AND I HOPE THAT CAME OUT OF YOUR OWN POCKET MONEY. WE HAVE BILLS COMING UP, AND— STOP THAT.”

“huh?”

“OPENING AND CLOSING YOUR HAND TO SIGNAL TO YOUR NEW FRIENDS THAT I AM TALKING TOO MUCH. I AM NOT TALKING TOO MUCH. I’M REMINDING YOU OF… OF… IMPORTANT BULLETPOINTS THAT YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF ALREADY! DO I NEED TO COME IN THERE AND HANDLE THIS MYSELF?!”

“okay, boss. okay,” Sans said quickly, rising from the booth. Papyrus had been too loud. He could see that now as more than a few heads in the bar swiveled towards Sans. He held up a finger to his booth, indicating that he would be back in a minute before heading to the door.

Papyrus watched as Sans stepped out into the snow. He moved to the right of the entryway and slouched against the building. He looked in Papyrus’ general direction, though it was unclear whether or not he could really pick him out among the shadows.

“okay.” Sans threw a quick look around, scanning the empty streets. “you can get back to shouting at me now,” he amended wearily.

It was odd. It was as if he could hear his brother speaking twice. Once clearly and then a second time coming out from his lousy phone speakers a moment behind. “I AM NOT SHOUTING! I AM USING MY NORMAL SPEAKING VOICE!”

Across the thoroughfare, Sans’ eyelights zeroed in on him. Maybe he _was_ shouting.

“look, i’m doin’ what you asked me to.”

Hearing Sans twice was distracting. He covered the top of his phone with his hand before responding. “YOU’RE TAKING TOO LONG.”

“what was i supposed to do? just walk in and kidnap someone? i’m tryin’ here. i don’t think this is a good idea, but i’m still tryin’. give me a break.”

Papyrus would give him several breaks if he didn’t drop the attitude soon. “WELL TRY FASTER.”

Sans heaved a sigh and dropped the phone to his side for a few seconds. “asshole doesn’t care what you think, idiot. never has. why would he start now?” Another deep sigh and he brought the phone back up. “no offense, boss but you’re not really at the top of yer game right now. maybe we should try something else first. i could still give alphys a call.”

Papyrus didn’t respond. His thoughts were still on the fact that he could hear Sans as clearly as if he were standing right next to him. Watching him through the window of Grillby’s he had been able to pick out quite a few details there as well. He prided himself on his sharp senses, but they had never been quite this sharp.

“boss?” Sans prompted after a few more seconds passed and Papyrus still hadn’t answered.

Papyrus shook his head, dismissing that thought. Vampires had heightened awareness. It was something he had read about and something he would be better off keeping to himself for now. Perhaps it would give him a tactical advantage later.

“DON’T CALL ALPHYS. WE CAN’T TRUST HER.”

“you don’t trust anyone,” Sans pointed out. “but sometimes you’ve gotta risk it.”

“ONLY WHEN YOU’VE EXHAUSTED ALL OTHER OPTIONS. ALPHYS THOUGHT GASTER WAS A GENIUS. FORGIVE ME IF I DON’T FULLY TRUST HER TO FIND A SOLUTION TO MY CURRENT PREDICAMENT. SHE WOULD JUST AS SOON CUT ME OPEN ON TO SEE OUR FATHER’S WORK FIRST-HAND.”

“c’mon, you really think i’d let that happen?”

“IF SHE GOT UNDYNE INVOLVED, I DOUBT YOU COULD DO MUCH.” Papyrus was speaking mostly to himself then, considering. That was something he had been worried about for a while now, Undyne finding out. What would she say if she could see him now? Standing outside of Grillby’s, waiting for his brother to lure someone outside…

“i guess you’re right.”

“OF COURSE I’M RIGHT. NOW GET BACK IN THERE. HURRY UP.”

“fine, just… hold your horses or your bats or whatever. if i rush it, i’m just gonna scare them off. and you calling just scares ‘em off faster. they’ll think you’re about to barge in and drag me home.”

Most monsters weren’t the biggest fans of the Royal Guard. That was true. Papyrus settled in to wait a bit longer. He crouched down as if making himself more compact might ease his discomfort, less surface area for the terrible ache of an all-over fatigue.

“boss…” Sans spoke softly. Across the thoroughfare, he took a hesitant step closer to Papyrus.

“DON’T COME OVER HERE,” Papyrus snapped, throwing a hand up to motion him back. “GO BACK IN THERE. DO WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO.”

“fine.” Sans hung up the phone. He turned and headed back into the bar.

Papyrus’ call had burst the fragile bubble of camaraderie around the booth Sans had stepped away from. Only the bunny remained, the others having migrated to the bar or towards the door themselves.

Papyrus saw a pair leave together, shoulders hunched against the wind. He wasn’t up to trying to take down two at once. That felt like a mistake.

So he waited… and waited… and waited…

It was another half hour before Sans left. The bunny monster was with him, leaning heavily on his shoulder and laughing shrilly. She was the one who led Sans around the back of the bar, tugging on his arm impatiently like it was her idea.

Papyrus kept low but moved quickly. The thought of finally having a warm meal had his tongue manifesting in anticipation already. His SOUL thrummed an anxious rhythm. His bones felt tight, the strings of magic that interlaced to compose them pulled taut in anticipation. While waiting, he had managed to let doubt in, to wonder if Sans was right, if he should take his chances with Alphys.

Now he had no doubts. He felt alive. He felt present.

Down the street, someone was humming a song he didn’t know. He could smell hops and grease from the bar but also a storm gathering high up above. The wind had a bite to it, cold in a way his bones had never intuited cold before.

Between Grillby’s and the edge of the woods behind it, there was an overflowing dumpster and a couple of large metal trashcans besides. Empty cardboard boxes and grocer crates were stacked in teetering piles to either side of the back entrance, a heavy door that only opened from the inside and hopefully not while any of them were back here.

The bunny was taller than Sans. Between the dumpster and a brick wall, she pushed him down on his knees, hooking a leg over his shoulder when he was low enough. The hem of her pleated skirt settled over the back of his skull.

That harshed Papyrus’ high a little. He stopped in the tree line, having hit a slight speedbump in his reverie.

The bunny monster lost her balance. Despite Sans gripping her thigh to try and steady her, she still tumbled onto her ass. There was enough fresh snow on the ground that she didn’t seem too fazed by it. She laughed and swatted Sans away when he staggered to his feet and offered a hand down to help her up.

Sans lost his own balance when the bunny grabbed hold of his hip bones and used those to maneuver onto her knees. The brick wall was close, though. Sans slouched back against the solidity of it as she tugged at the elastic of his waistband.

Sans wasn’t really paying attention as the bunny fumbled with his shorts. He was looking over her head, scanning the woods. When his eyelights finally settled on Papyrus, his sockets widened emphatically. What was he waiting for?

Papyrus blinked. He shrugged off his surprise. He moved in.

It was easy in the way that breathing was easy. His body knew what to do. Thinking too much just complicated things. He grabbed the bunny by the tops of her arms and hauled her to her feet. She squealed when Papyrus wrapped a hand around her floppy ears, pulled her head to one side to expose the downy brown fur of her throat. Her pulse was fast and loud. Papyrus bit down.

His teeth had been sharp before his recent transition into a creature of the night. The broke skin without applying too much pressure at all. His teeth pushed in and blood gushed out, and…

Papyrus shoved the bunny away. He turned and retched, falling to his hands and knees, drooling ropes of bright red onto the glittering white of the snow.

No, no, no. This was all wrong! He was supposed to drink blood. He knew he was. He could imagine it. See it in his mind’s eye, smell it, feel it warm on his tongue. He was supposed to surprise his prey. It was what vampires did. It was how the literature had said this would go.

But the bunny had tasted like cigarettes and booze. She tasted the way stale wine smelled. This wasn’t right.

“boss?” Footsteps crunched in the snow, closing a short distance.

Papyrus flinched away when he felt Sans put a hand on his shoulder. “NOT NOW.”

The hand left his shoulder. The footsteps crunched in a different direction. “you okay?”

The bunny. Papyrus spun to face her. She was picking herself up, dusting herself off. She was frowning. “Is that it?”

Papyrus’ body was tensed. To do what, he wasn’t sure. He needed to do something though, surely. He had just assaulted this monster. That tension gradually dissipated as he realized she looked more annoyed than frightened.

Her throat wasn’t bleeding badly. She touched it a couple of times before wiping it off with a sleeve. “Is that it?” she asked again. She was looking directly at Papyrus as she spoke. He opened his mouth, but sound didn’t come out. He wasn’t sure how to answer her.

“looks like it,” Sans answered for him. “sorry about that.” His words were sluggish and slightly slurred despite recent events.

The bunny threw back her head and groaned dramatically. “Lame. So lame. I was excited. I’d never done this before.”

“roleplay?” Sans gave Papyrus a meaningful look.

“What?” she scoffed. “No. _Brothers_.” She swayed on her feet a little. “It sounded fun. Instead it was just lame. Un-unless… We could drop the roleplay.” She gave Papyrus a lazy wink, completely indifferent to the fact that he was doubled over his own bloody vomit in the snow. “I don’t mind.”

Papyrus stared back at her for what felt like a very long time. Finally, he found his voice and the words he was looking for. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“DON’T SPEAK OF WHAT HAPPENED HERE TO ANYONE.” Papyrus realized too late that he should have either led with that request or not mentioned it at all.

“Speak of what?” She snorted. “That you’re boring? That you seem like you’d be into some kinky shit because you fuck your brother, but you’ve just got a stick up your ass and not like…” She hiccuped and paused for a moment, looking queasy. It passed. She continued, “And not, like, in a hot way.”

“DON’T…” Papyrus trailed off. Don’t what? Don’t insult him? Don’t mention that he tried and failed to drink her blood? Don’t talk about the things he did with Sans? “THAT’S NOT…”

The bunny turned away from him, facing Sans instead. She hugged his right arm. “C’mon, Sansy. You still know how to have a good time, right? Why don’t you come home with me?”

But Sans’ attention was on his brother. He was wearing that pitying look again. Papyrus looked away.

“nah. better not.”

The bunny let go of Sans and took a step back. “Fine! You’re both boring!” She smoothed down her skirt and started a shuffling beeline back towards the front of the bar. She paused at the corner of the building to flip them off.

Sans sneered, gold tooth flashing in the electric lamplight. He’d lured her back here to feed her to his brother. A guilty conscious had tempered Sans’ attitude towards her, but it seemed like that patience was finally running thin. “will you just get out of here already?”

“Fuck you!”

“fuck you!”

“Call me, okay?” She slipped around the corner without waiting for an answer.

Sans watched the spot where she had been for several long seconds before deciding she was really gone. He hurried back to Papyrus. “boss! shit, are you okay?”

“YES.” Papyrus seethed the lie through his teeth, fists clenched so tight he heard his knuckles pop. “LEAVE ME. GO HOME. I NEED TO THINK.”

But Sans didn’t move, and Papyrus didn’t really expect him to. He didn’t stand yet. He sat back on his heels. He stared at the ground, Sans’ sneakers visible in his periphery as he anxiously shifted his weight. “look, boss, don’t be mad, but—”

Sans stopped speaking when Papyrus’ head snapped up in his direction. When had anyone ever prefaced anything good with “don’t be mad.”

“it’s just…” Sans blew out a long, low breath. He looked away for a moment then back. Jaw set, shoulders squared, balance precarious. Mildly inebriated but determined. ”c’mon.let’s get home.” He took Papyrus gently by the shoulders and pulled. He didn’t have the upper body strength to haul him to his feet against his will, but there was an attempt. “you can’t just sit here… i mean— you can but you shouldn’t. and i can’t leave you here moping, so-”

“I AM NOT _MOPING_.” He said the words reflexively, but they were also the truth. He wasn’t moping. If he was really being honest with himself right now, what he was was scared.

“yeah,” said Sans and Papyrus felt a gentle pressure as the hands on his shoulders squeezed, a gesture meant to be reassuring that very nearly was. “i know.”

In moments like these, Papyrus could recall a time when Sans had been his big brother in more than just a chronological sense. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, though for right now he cooperated and got to his feet. Sans was forced to let go of his shoulders as soon as he’d made it off his knees.

“THERE’S NO POINT IN GOING HOME. THERE’S NOTHING I CAN EAT AT HOME.” Just saying that aloud had him clenching his teeth and folding his arms around his middle, miserable. He felt a little unsteady too. It must have been obvious, because he felt Sans’ hand on his elbow next, steadying him. Of course, if Papyrus did lose his balance it was unlikely that Sans would be much help. Even less so inebriated. It was the blind leading the marginally less blind.

“we can go home then decide what to do next.” Sans took a step towards the corner of the building but stopped when Papyrus’ feet remained planted. “i, uh— well, i called Alphys.”

Papyrus looked sharply in Sans’ direction again. He saw his brother shrink away, though he had yet to release his elbow.

“texted her, actually.” Sans’ smile might have been meant to look reassuring. To Papyrus it just looked nervous. “i figure we’ll meet with her at the house. talk to her on your terms, you know?”

“IF I WANTED TO TALK WITH HER ON MY TERMS, I WOULD HAVE CONTACTED HER MYSELF.” Papyrus jerked his arm from his brother’s grip. He started walking, though he picked a direction other than the one Sans had tried to steer him in. He wasn’t sure where he was going. Away from their house. At least for now.

“boss.” Sans stretched out the word into an exasperated keen that only made Papyrus walk faster. “there’s this thing that i haven’t— that i probably should have mentioned, i— maybe if all three of us went down to the lab, and— aw, c’mon please wait.”

Papyrus felt Sans’ hand on his radius. He jerked away again, sweeping his arm out this time to push him back. His forearm connected with something solid. He heard Sans swear followed by the soft thud of him hitting the snow.

Papyrus stopped and turned, looking down at his brother to confirm that he was all right. He was upset, yes, but backhanding Sans had been an accident. “I DON’T LIKE THAT YOU WENT BEHIND MY BACK, BUT FINE. I WAS PREPARED TO CONTACT ALPHYS SOON ANYWAY.”

Sans sat in the snow, slouched forward, head in his hands. He lowered them for a moment, looked at them, put his face in them again.

“DID YOU HEAR ME, SANS?” Papyrus rubbed his forearm. It stung a bit. He lowered his voice a little, tried to sound brusque. “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

“yeah, boss.” Sans looked up, his hands slid down. Only his eye sockets were visible, eyelights anxious pinpricks peering up at his brother. “shouldn’t have drank so much, i guess.” He chuckled as he shifted onto his knees. It sounded insincere. “i’m right behind ya.”

He was getting to his feet, true, but it was an awkward and arduous process. It appeared he was intent upon not using his hands. And there he was right, at least. He wasn’t especially graceful operating at his best. Slightly intoxicated, it was downright frustrating to watch.

Papyrus rubbed his tender forearm again. He fought the urge to CHECK Sans, stepping forward instead. “STOP BEING WEIRD. COME ON.” He reached for Sans but managed to grab onto nothing as his brother dropped back onto his ass and scooted away. His hands were still over most of his face, eyesockets wide. Papyrus closed the remaining distance between them in a single stride, grabbed him by the wrists, and yanked him to his feet. “WHAT’S WRONG WITH—”

He smelled it before he actually saw it. It was the same smell that had brought him into the kitchen. He’d been able to taste a ghost of that scent on his brother’s bones. Now he could see it. Now it simultaneously made more sense and less than ever before.

As a member of the Royal Guard, Papyrus had broken up fights. He had also started them. Obviously, not all monsters bled, but the ones that did always seemed especially vulnerable to getting punched in the face. Bitten cheek, busted lip, broken nose. Maybe that last one was what Papyrus was seeing now. It was hard to say. It was hard to tell through the blood.

It was bright red against his skull, smeared where Papyrus had pried his hands away. He held both of Sans’ wrists still. Sans stared at him, motionless. Papyrus had questions, but he couldn’t find the words to ask them. He felt a new tongue against his teeth. He felt saliva pooling. His soft palate had manifested at the thought of food, faded when it had proved to be inedible. And now it was back. He could eat this. He knew with certainty, that he could eat this.

“boss?”

Papyrus cupped his right hand around Sans’ left, interlacing their fingers to pry them back. He touched his tongue to the heel of his hand, ran it up to his palm. He shuddered. There wasn’t enough blood to necessitate swallowing. All he got was the taste. Even so, it calmed the hunger gnawing at his spine. It expanded in his mouth, through his skull. It went up like a spark finding fuel, hot and bright, dimming his vision while also sharpening it.

And like a flame, it guttered out. It left him cold. It left him disoriented. He didn’t want to wait for his eyelights to adjust. He wanted the flame back.

“hey, boss?”

Papyrus rested his mouth against Sans’ hand. His teeth bumped up against his metacarpals. He breathed him in.

“can you hear me?”

Papyrus could have bit down but didn’t. His teeth scraped at the side of his brother’s hand instead.

Sans still screamed. He jerked his hand away. The bone raked against Papyrus’ teeth when he did. There was enough blood on his tongue that he could swallow it. Finally. After licking at that hard candy all day, he’d finally gotten to bite it, he’d found that juicy core inside. It lit a fire in him for a second time. He wanted to keep it burning.

Sans pivoted. “fuck,” he gasped. The turn he made was sloppy, tripping over his own feet in his rush to get away. Papyrus grabbed for him, catching his right arm. Static fuzzed on his bones. At first Papyrus thought it was his own adrenaline, but no. This felt not unlike a shortcut, like one of the few tools Gaster had left them with.

“get off me!” Sans had pulled his wounded hand in close to his chest, but now he snaked it out. A bone sprung from his palm, cutting a three foot path through the falling snow, sending the flakes spiraling off, painting them red in his magic’s neon sign glow. The blunt end came down in an arc.

Papyrus raised his arms, shielding himself reflexively just before the blow glanced off his elbow. He sucked in a breath through his teeth as a shockwave of discomfort rocked him from scapula to styloid.

The bone in Sans’ hand vanished, and he began to do the same. Papyrus reached out. He missed his arm, fingers closing around his hood instead. That worked too. He pulled.

Sans yelped. He nearly lost his footing but recovered, rolling his shoulders back to slip out of the jacket entirely. Papyrus let the jacket go. He lunged forward. Sans vanished, but not before Papyrus had a firm grip on his humerus. When Sans teleported, Papyrus went with him.

A rush of silver set against a color too dark to be black. Strings of code, a tunnel whose walls were webs of what Papyrus intuited as data without quite knowing why. Before he could even wonder at it, it was gone. He was pitching forward onto the snow and onto Sans.

Sans grunted, the breath compressed from his ribcage beneath his brother’s weight. Papyrus felt him trying to push himself up, felt the expansion of his ribs through the back of his shirt as he tried to find breath enough to speak. “dammit, boss,” he hissed, pushing up suddenly to try and buck him off.

Sans fighting him wasn’t something that Papyrus was used to. First using a magic attack on him, now this. It gave him pause as he picked himself up. Sans used that pause to scramble out from beneath him.

They were out in front of their house, Papyrus realized. Snow was falling. There wasn’t anyone around that he could see, though the average Snowdin denizen was unlikely to intervene anyway.

Sans had gotten to his knees. There was blood on the snow where his left hand had touched it. The smell had never left Papyrus, but the contrast of red on white reminded him of the taste and the indescribable relief it had offered him. He grabbed Sans by the leg. Sans cursed again, fell in the snow again. “will you calm down for a minute?! boss, don’t— fuck!”

Papyrus caught a kick to the spine and a punch to the shoulder. It was difficult to wrestle Sans onto his back, but he managed. Getting him to stay still was another matter. He was trying to pin both of Sans’ arms with one of his own when he froze.

Sans was breathing heavily. His eyelights were big and bright, bouncing from Papyrus to his battle body then back again. For his part, Papyrus was very still. He looked down, careful not to move too much.

Sans had pulled his injured hand in close to his body, palm out. A new bone had sprung from it, though this time it was the sharpened end he had sent Papyrus’ way. He knew because it had punched a hole clean through his battle body. He could feel the tip where it ended in a point between his ribs, a hair away from his SOUL.

“HUH,” he said, not a question, more an intrigued hum.

In the research materials Papyrus had pored over, it seemed that vampires were often killed like this. The hero drove a stake through their heart. The vampire turned to dust.

“back up, please.” Sans’ voice cracked slightly, but he took a deep breath, steeling himself before continuing. “i know i should have said something earlier. i get that. we should talk— which i can’t do if you dust me, so… c’mon.” He inclined his head a little, imploring him, hand trembling. He managed to keep his attack away from Papyrus’ SOUL, but he could still feel the edge of it bumping between his ribs like a dinner bell.

Sans’ nasal cavity had stopped bleeding— or else the bone had. It was difficult to tell with the way the blood had smeared in the struggle. Not that there was too much blood to make out anything. It was just that it made his skull throb as his hunger urged him to move in closer despite the threat of being dusted in the process. It was streaked across his cheekbones, his mouth, his chin. It was growing cold in the snow. Soon, it would likely dry. What a waste that would be.

His intentions must have been plain on his face. Sans groaned. “i don’t want to do this. i will if i gotta, but i really don’t want to.” His fingers flexed around the base of the bone he’d created. “and i know you don’t wanna kill me, right?” he smiled a mirthless smile. He swallowed then turned his head a little, looking off to the left. “i know you say you do sometimes, but i don’t think you mean it… i know you didn’t once anyway… maybe you’ve changed your mind since then.” He sounded more uncertain the longer he spoke, his words growing quieter and more halting.

Red stood out on his jaw. It was hard to focus on much else. Maybe Sans kept talking, but Papyrus wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the throbbing in his skull.

He leaned in. There was an awful metallic squeal as the bone scraped against his armor, the pointed end moving in deeper. He felt it poke at his SOUL and winced.

“papyrus!”

He heard that. It wasn’t often that Sans called him anything other than ‘boss.’ It sounded very far away, but he had heard it.

That blood on his skull, though…

Papyrus descended on his brother completely. Sans’ attack vanished at once. For all his talk, he really wasn’t prepared to kill him. Papyrus hoped he was the same, though the part that hoped that was being awfully quiet right now.

The blood on Sans’ face had indeed cooled. He licked it from the corner of his mouth anyway. Not as good as that first proper mouthful of the stuff had been, but still good. Sans’ hands rested on the backs of his shoulders. He wasn’t fighting him anymore.

“ya know…” began Sans. Papyrus could feel his jaw move as he spoke, quietly. “if i’m the only thing you’ve found that you can eat and you dust me, you’re gonna be outta luck. you know what they say, a moment on the… well, you don’t have lips, but you know what i mean.”

Papyrus tugged down Sans’ turtleneck. It was difficult to move around the collar. He fumbled with both, hands clumsy with anticipation.

“if you’re about to kill me, you can just take that off. not like it matters anymore.”

Papyrus couldn’t place what he was talking about at first. Then he felt the leather beneath his phalanges. The collar. Yes. It did have a buckle. He could just remove it.

But no. That wasn’t right. The collar was seldom removed indoors and never outside.

Papyrus remembered the first time he had put it on him. Sans was on his knees in the snow. He wouldn’t stand when Papyrus told him to. He had to wrench his head back to get the collar around his neck. He didn’t bleed back then. Papyrus felt confident of that. He would have been bleeding then had his body the capacity for it. Of course, Papyrus hadn’t craved blood back then either. _Something_ had changed.

_**The collar was too big. It wasn’t meant for skeletons. The turtleneck helped. Papyrus pulled it tight, pushing the prong on the buckle through the leather itself to make a new hole past the final notch.** _

_**There was still dust on it, muting the red of his shirt. Some of it transfered to Sans’ cheekbones and jaw as Papyrus took his head in his hands. He did so firmly, forcing eye contact. He gave him what he hoped was a meaningful look.** _

_**This was a warning.** _

Papyrus’ hands lingered at Sans’ collar. He began to remove it.

What happened next happened fast. It started as a vibration that caught his attention but barely gave his thoughts time to process that he was feeling it, much less guess at what it might be.

And then pain.

All over pain that started at his torso expanded out. His eyelights sputtered. His limbs locked up. Before he could collapse onto Sans, he felt his brother’s hands on his shoulders tighten, pushing him off and onto the snow.

Papyrus landed on his back, staring up at snowflakes and noting a new but familiar shape in his periphery.

“That worked,” Alphys said brightly. “I wasn’t sure it would. I’ve never tried it on skeletons.” A rod in her hand sparked, bright white electricity arcing from one end to the other with a pop that made her jump. With a yelp, she fumbled with a red button on the side until the thing turned off. “It’s lucky that armor he wears is metal.”

“it’s lucky you didn’t fry me too,” grumbled Sans as he staggered to his feet. He looked down at Papyrus long enough to confirm that he wasn’t about to turn into dust.

“You’re _welcome_ , by the way.”

“thanks.”

Papyrus felt a spasm in his hand. Feeling was coming back to it. He opened and closed it a couple of times. Its range of movement was coming back too.

“That didn’t really sound like you meant it.”

“because i didn’t. can we move him somewhere?”

“I mean…” Alphys sniffed. “I feel like you could be a _little_ appreciative. I probably just saved your life right now.”

“you’ll have to forgive me if i’m not— shit!” Sans staggered backward as Papyrus sprang to his feet and lunged forward.

Alphys stood there wide-eyed and useless. She was clutching the deactivated rod like she had managed to stun herself somehow. It wasn’t hard to yank from her. He used his momentum. If he hesitated, he was sure he would change his mind. He held it to his armor, pressed the red button, and promptly collapsed face first onto the snow.

Several long seconds of silence.

“Oh, that first shock didn’t knock him out for very long.”

“ya fucking _think_?!”

“I used it on something much larger than him earlier today. It was effective for much longer then, but like I said I’ve never used this thing on skeletons. I shouldn’t have just assumed, though. That was unprofessional of me. All of this has me a bit flustered. It’s very exciting.”

“you got anything on you that might last longer?”

“I’ve got a gun.”

Sans’ voice went uncharacteristically shrill. “no!”

“I’ve got a net?”

“are you asking me if you have a net?”

“Hang on, let me look for it.” There was a muffled shifting and the sound of a zipper unzipping.

“we don’t have time for this! you saw how fast that shock wore off last time.”

“It won’t wear off this time.”

“how do you know?”

“It’s still on.”

“oh, shit—”

There was a crunching on the snow that quickly came closer. Papyrus heard Sans drop to his knees and was immensely relieved when he heard the hum of the rod powering down and felt it slide out from beneath him. He couldn’t move, but that was okay. That was what he wanted. At least for now. He just wished the whole thing was slightly more dignified than being sprawled out face down in the snow.

Papyrus was surprised to feel Sans’ hand on his shoulder again. He grunted with the effort of rolling Papyrus onto his back. As stiff and uncooperative as his bones were presently, he was dead weight.

He managed it. Papyrus wasn’t face down anymore, but he wasn’t sure he much preferred being able to see his brother right now. Sans was just squatting there, fingering his collar thoughtfully as he frowned down at him. It was difficult to tell what he was thinking. He kept glancing over at the rod, though he didn’t reach for it. Nearby, Papyrus could still hear what sounded like Alphys sifting through the contents of a bag.

The smell of blood in the air had hung there long enough that Papyrus had almost grown used to it. He didn’t notice at first when Sans lifted his hand, but he most certainly did when a fat droplet of blood hit his teeth and then another.

The hand Papyrus had bitten was still bleeding, albeit slowly. Sans opened and closed it several times, wringing what sustenance he could from it while they waited for Alphys.

Papyrus closed his eyes, catching blood and snowflakes on his ectoflesh tongue. It bloomed in his mouth. It engaged all his senses. It wasn’t enough.

“Got it,” announced Alphys.

The blood stopped falling. Papyrus heard Sans scramble backwards. He opened his eyes in time to see the net in the air, spread wide and plummeting towards him. It landed hard and heavy. A part of Papyrus wished he was still face down in the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments mean a lot to me. They help me determine which fics to finish and which fics to shelve. When fics start running long, it gets hard to tell if they still have a readership. Kudos, hits, subs, and bookmarks only count once. Comments are really the only way I know people are reading.
> 
> And, of course, feel free to follow me over on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Missus_Id


	4. Chapter 4

  
  


There was a window of time in what passed for a childhood where Papyrus was absolutely certain that the only emotions Sans held for him were dark ones. Sometimes he would catch his brother watching him, eyelights dull and pensive, gnawing anxious divots into the second knuckle of his pointer finger. A nasty habit, that. The biting. He grew out of it.

He grew out of the fraternal antipathy as well. Or, at least, he consolidated it. Streamlined it. Surely, all those dark feelings couldn’t have gone away.

  
Papyrus thought he caught a hint of them every time Sans called him Boss. If that was the case, wires had gotten crossed at some point. He seemed content deferring to Papyrus. He was more content than he had been living in the lab, at least.

…Wasn’t he?

They were close when they were small. His earliest memory was sitting in the room where they slept. The only light came from the desk lamp behind them. Sans was folding Papyrus’ fingers down, showing him how to make the shadow of his hand resemble the bunny from their book.

They hadn’t left the lab much back then. The home they lived in now had once belonged to Gaster. They stayed there more often as Gaster’s absences got longer and his interest in them waned.

Sans preferred the lab. He had a hunger for praise. The lights of his eyes shone bright when Gaster talked about other worlds. There were other universes, most of them preferable to the one they lived in now. If pressed, he would describe them. They made Papyrus think of the pictures he saw in their storybooks. Not wholly unlike the reality they lived in, but still unrealistic. 

Gaster spoke of brothers in other worlds that both were and were not them. For longer than he cared to admit to himself, Papyrus had also enjoyed praise from Gaster. Gaster preferred the version of him in this universe, he said. “YOU INVARIABLY BECOME MORE DISAGREEABLE IN ADULTHOOD, BUT EVEN THAT HAS ITS USES. YOU’RE MORE INTELLIGENT, AT LEAST. I BELIEVE THIS WORLD SHARPENS YOUR MIND. IT’S A SHAME IT DULLS YOUR BROTHER’S.”

Papyrus had no frame of reference for that sort of thing. He didn’t know what his alternate selves were like. He didn’t care to. He saw the work of people that called themselves Sans but weren’t his brother.

Sans used to pore over it obsessively. Papyrus had a vivid memory of waking up to the rustling of papers and the hushed sound of Sans muttering the words as he read them, head drooping as he endeavored to stay awake. Papyrus remembered leaning from his cot to unplug the desk lamp by yanking hard on its cord.

“hey!”

“GO TO BED.”

“i’m in bed.”

“THEN GO TO SLEEP.”

An angry rustle of papers in the dark came moments before the lamp flickered back on. Sans was crouched on the floor beside the outlet. “i need to figure this out by tomorrow.”

“WHY?”

“he’s leaving again soon.” Sans remained crouched at the lamp with his papers. He probably thought Papyrus would unplug it again if he moved. He’d be right about that.

Papyrus waffled over whether or not to respond at all. Curiosity got the better of him, though he tried his best to sound indifferent. “DID HE SAY SOMETHING?”

“no… but you can tell.”

He was right about that too. Papyrus could indeed tell. Gaster had been restless lately, more easily annoyed and considerably less patient. That morning he had snatched the clipboard from Sans’ hands and motioned him out of the room with it. Papyrus had remained. He was the basis of Gaster’s most recent experimentation and, if the doctor’s mood was an indicator, that wasn’t going well either.

“GOOD. WE’LL HAVE THE HOUSE TO OURSELVES FOR A WHILE.”

“no.” Sans’ voice was tight. There was a tension in his shoulders that Papyrus didn’t see often.  _ “not _ good. i can’t… concentrate outside of the lab.”

“PROBABLY BECAUSE THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT OUT THERE THAN GASTER’S POINTLESS EXPERIMENTS.”

“exactly. so, if i can just convince him to take us too the next time he leaves. maybe—”

“DON’T BE AN IDIOT.”

“i’m not—”

“WHERE AM I IN THIS FANTASY?” Papyrus scoffed. “DO I COME TOO OR ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE DO WITH WHATEVER VERSION OF ME IS IN THIS AMAZING NEW WORLD YOU END UP IN?”

Sans fixed him with a level stare. “you would come too.” His answer was immediate and certain. He had thought about this already. “you’re too important.”

Papyrus grunted, using his annoyance to try and obscure the fact that he didn’t have a response for that, that he was starting to believe that wasn’t true.

“you are. he’s spent so much time and effort here, how could you  _ not  _ be important?”

Maybe Gaster was just ready to cut his losses. “JUST SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP ALREADY.” It seemed unthinkable now that there was a time when he had to demand his brother stop working. That night he had rolled over as angrily as anyone  _ can  _ roll over, turning his back to Sans.

Sans said nothing at first. The level of light in the room didn’t change, but there was no shuffling of papers. “do you mind if i sleep over there with you?”

Papyrus recognized what he was doing. It was borderline patronizing. “DO WHAT YOU WANT. I DON’T CARE.” But he did, and he was relieved when the light went out and he felt the cot shift.

Tucked away in their little corner of the lab, there was a decent chance that Gaster would find them in bed together before either woke up. He had never commented on the things they did sometimes when they were alone. It took an embarrassingly long time before Papyrus realized that the relationship he had with Sans wasn’t, strictly speaking, normal. Their “ _Flowers in the Attic_ situation” Alphys demurely put it, blushing, clearing her throat, gesturing vaguely on the rare occasion she had reason to broach the subject.

Sans bowed his skull in the space between Papyrus’ shoulder blades. “i’d never just abandon you,” he said, quietly, but firmly.

But he had. Not long after that, either.

It wasn’t anything dramatic. One day he returned from an errand to find the lab empty. It had been an utterly average day. He couldn’t even recall what Sans and Gaster had been doing before he left. He remembered Sans on a ladder, absently telling him to be careful as he passed by him on his way out the door. Changing a light maybe or checking one of the many wire casings that fed up through the ceiling. Routine enough that he had grunted and carried on.

The telltale signs of Gaster having left were there when he returned. That infernal machine was gone. Papyrus was relieved at first. King Asgore didn’t like a couple of teenagers having run of the labs. When Gaster left, so did they. The rest of Gaster’s team moved in and did… whatever it was they used the place for when Gaster wasn’t around.

Papyrus preferred life in Snowdin. Mostly. Sans didn’t, so that put a bit of a damper on things. For the first month or so that Gaster was gone, Sans would make the walk to the lab on a daily basis. Gaster didn’t always inform them when he returned. The only way to be certain was to go and check, a long walk if you couldn’t pay the ferryman.

Eventually, Sans’ sojourns would slow to a weekly event. The rest of the time he spent holed up in his room, the floors carpeted in papers and books from his other selves.

All of that was still preferable to life with Gaster. Papyrus felt lighter at first, walking the halls looking for his brother, expecting to find him somewhere with his head in his hands.

But he didn’t find him on his first pass of the lab… nor his second… or his third… or his tenth.

He made the walk to Snowdin, hands shaking and chest tight. He searched their usual route through Waterfall and probed every corner of their house in Snowdin.

Papyrus sat for a moment before he left out again, burying his face in his scarf like maybe if he hid his face he could convince himself he wasn’t crying. He had to get it out of his system before he walked out the door. The Underground preyed on weakness, and now that he was alone they already had reason to believe him weak.

He searched the route they walked for a second time, but his urgency had been replaced with a heavy numbness. It was dark when he got back to the lab. Sans had abandoned him. The why of the thing didn’t matter. He would probably return with Gaster at some point. The when didn’t matter either, though. Sans had abandoned him.

He went downstairs to get his things. He wanted to leave before he was told to. Before someone came and noticed that he was the only one left, that Sans had gone, that he was alone.

Papyrus heard the sound of running water first. Then typing. The former came from the bathroom, the latter from Gaster’s office.

“PAPYRUS, IS THAT YOU?” Gaster’s voice came from behind a door that was slightly ajar. Papyrus’ feet carried him to it without conscious thought, pausing only once he was in the doorway of the office.

The doctor sat at his desk, eyelights on the computer monitor between them. He was spinning a fountain pen slowly in his long, agile fingers. He didn’t even look up when Papyrus arrived.

“PUT ON SOME COFFEE, WILL YOU?” Gaster raised his head when Papyrus had remained motionless and silent for several long moments. “WHAT IS IT?”

“WHERE WERE YOU?” Papyrus didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice at first. It sounded tight, unusually strained.

“I HAD BUSINESS TO ATTEND TO.”

“AND SANS…”

“ACCOMPANIED ME.”

“WHERE IS HE?”

Gaster inclined his head, like he couldn’t comprehend Papyrus’ change in demeanor. “I DON’T KNOW.” He gestured vaguely with his fountain pen. “AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE.”

Papyrus turned, rushing to the bathroom next. He could still hear running water and now that he drew near, he could see that the door was slightly ajar. Lights over the sink threw a shadow on the opposite wall that was squat and familiar.

“SANS?” Papyrus nudged the door open.

Sans was indeed there. His head snapped up when Papyrus said his name, hands trembling on the basin while the water ran. His sockets were wide, his chest heaving. His lab coat was gone, and there was a rip on his shirt sleeve. Was he hurt? He was wet, but not with water from the sink. There was a dark cast to the wetness, like the kind you got from getting knocked on your ass in the streets of Snowdin. Mud under snow.

Papyrus made it no closer than a couple steps nearer to his brother. Sans threw a hand out in his direction. Papyrus felt the pull on his SOUL first. The rest of him followed after as he was launched back out into the hallway, boots squeaking on tile as he struggled to maintain his footing.

The bathroom door slammed shut.

Papyrus braced himself against the wall as he considered the bathroom door and whether or not forcing his way back inside was the right thing to do.

Movement in his periphery drew his attention. He turned in time to see Gaster step back into his office. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Papyrus heard the sounds of stressed metal, water dripping from the joinings of pipes that groaned. He was on his back, a blanket atop him and the cold, hard floor below. There was a pillow beneath his head.

Someone had made a sort of token gesture at trying to make him comfortable. The fact that he appeared to be in a cage of sorts undermined it, but there had been an attempt.

The cage was large, at least. It might have been more apt to call it a cell were it not free-standing. It wasn’t part of the room’s original architecture. It had been constructed here to contain something after the fact. Though, judging by the rust he saw on the bars and the claw marks on the ceiling, he felt fairly confident that it wasn’t so new it had been built just for him.

The turning of a page. Sans was there. He hadn’t noticed that Papyrus was awake yet. He was outside of the cage, reading a book. The chair he sat in teetered on two legs, one sneaker on the cage to keep his balance. A dangerous place to be. The cage was meant for something far larger than Papyrus. The bars weren’t so close together that he wouldn’t be able to fit an arm through them.

It was tempting. He was still ravenous.

His ribs still ached from the shock of the stun baton, though. That curbed his hunger somewhat. The memory that he probably would have killed his brother if not for that stun baton helped too.

Papyrus sat up and hurled his pillow at the bars of the cage. Sans yelped once and then a second time when he very nearly toppled over backwards. He regained his balance, unfortunately. All four of his chair legs settled back on solid ground.

“boss.” Sans scrambled to his feet, the chair sliding back a bit, scraping against the floor with a metallic whine. His sockets were wide, his posture tense. He was anxious. Good. He should be.

Blankets weren’t as satisfying to throw as pillows. He stalked toward the door of the cage. Sans took a step back at his approach, and Papyrus wasn’t sure if that pleased him. His brother being afraid of him was nothing new, but… Sans had always trusted him. It wasn’t implicit. Papyrus had never put it into words exactly, into more than a thought in the back of his mind. He didn’t want to think about it too much even now, but it was impossible not to recognize the truth, that this was a different kind of fear. Sans’ trust was gone— or, at the very least, much diminished.

Of course, that went both ways.

“YOU LIED TO ME.” Papyrus stopped short of the bars and stabbed a finger at his brother.

Sans raised his hands, palms out in supplication. The book he had been reading dropped to the floor. “i didn’t.” The way his eyelights cut to the left indicated he  _ knew  _ he needed to amend that statement. “i didn’t  _ lie  _ exactly _.  _ i didn’t say anything, but—”

“A LIE OF OMISSION IS STILL A LIE.” He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Sans, waiting to see if there was a different excuse he wanted to try.

“i was going to tell you.” But Sans was looking at the floor, and his voice was very small. He didn’t sound so sure of that. Not that it mattered. Papyrus wasn’t interested in ‘what ifs.’

“HAVE YOU ALWAYS…” Papyrus trailed off, looked his brother up and down with an expression he hoped suitably conveyed his contempt. “LEAKED?”

“i don’t know,” Sans mumbled as he crouched down to retrieve his book. It wasn’t an answer to Papyrus’ question. It sounded like he was talking to himself. Stalling until he came up with a new lie no doubt.

Papyrus scanned the cover of the book. The transcript of some sort of interview with a vampire. Likely filched from Gaster’s library. Well, at least he was doing research instead of lazing about.

“DID GASTER KNOW?”

Sans answered, but he wasn’t looking at him as he did so. It was frustrating. “yeah.”

“AND HE DIDN’T TELL ME ABOUT IT?”

A scoff from Sans, “did he ever tell you anything?”

That was a fair point. “YOU’VE KEPT THIS FROM ME FOR SOME TIME THEN.” Papyrus wanted to be angry, and he was… But, more than that, he was strangely saddened. It made him feel foolish, not knowing something like this. And it implied things that, if true, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to. He needed to ask anyway, “DID YOU KNOW WHAT I WAS BEFORE ALL OF THIS?”

“no,” Sans said immediately, stressing the word. He raised his head to look at Papyrus, and that was comforting. Humiliating that it was something to feel relieved over, but comforting all the same.

But there was something in the way his eyes cut away again that made the SOUL in Papyrus’ ribcage sink. “YOU KNEW  _ SOMETHING _ .”

Sans didn’t answer immediately, which was answer enough. His jaw worked for several moments while he searched for the words. “i guess… sort of?”

“SORT OF?” Papyrus spat the words. He thought of the way Sans had laughed when he had come to his station with Gaster’s research. The idea of his being a vampire had struck him as absurd. And then, unbidden, Papyrus recalled the dream he’d had on the floor of the cage. He recalled Sans braced breathless against the bathroom sink. He remembered the momentary weightlessness of being launched backwards when, startled, Sans had flung out a hand in his direction.

That memory tugged on another, fainter one. That had only been the first time Sans had vanished along with Gaster; it had happened a second time. For much longer too. Gaster had left with Sans and returned alone. Papyrus remembered, vaguely, the stages he had gone through after that. Angry, anxious, devastated, back to angry again.

Gaster was less than helpful, answering no questions directly. “YOU KNOW HE WANTED TO LEAVE THIS UNIVERSE. AND WHO COULD FAULT HIM FOR THAT? THERE ARE MORE INTERESTING UNIVERSES OUT THERE.”

“CAN I GO TOO?” Papyrus had asked slowly, careful not to sound too desperate. He didn’t want to be alone.

“I DON’T THINK YOU WOULD LIKE IT THERE. YOU’RE BEST SUITED HERE.”

Papyrus wondered if that was true when he went home to an empty house after another grueling training session with Undyne. She said he wasn’t cut out for this. No one was sitting across him at the dinner table to tell him otherwise.

  
  
  


“i didn’t see any of this coming or anything,” Sans muttered, his voice drawing Papyrus’ attention back to the present. “not this  _ exactly ,  _ at least.”

“WHAT  _ DID  _ YOU SEE COMING THEN?” Papyrus had long since been sapped of any and all patience. That Sans was  _ still  _ so obviously keeping something from him was infuriating. “IF THERE’S ANYTHING ELSE YOU’RE NOT TELLING ME, SPIT IT OUT NOW.”

There was so much to say. The fact that he had come very close to killing Sans was still hanging over both of their heads. And there was the matter of where to go from here on out. He was still hungry, and he didn’t plan on spending the rest of his life in a cage.

Sans winced, visibly agonizing over what to say next.

“SANS!” Papyrus hit the wall of the cage to get his attention. It clanged loudly. Sans jumped and dropped his book again.

“i…” he swore under his breath before raising his head to meet Papyrus’ gaze. “i promised i wouldn’t.”

“WHO DID YOU PROMISE?” Papyrus took a step back from the wall of the cage. Another betrayal. “WAS IT GASTER?”

“no.” Sans spat the word, sounding offended that the thought had even crossed Papyrus’ mind. “cat’s out of the bag now, i guess. no gettin’ in back in there.  _ you  _ were the one who told me not to say anything, okay? it was you.”

Papyrus’ thoughts tried to make sense of what his brother had just said. After failing, they returned to the weeks he had been without Sans. Because he had come back. Of course he had come back. Papyrus hadn’t questioned him too much about it, hadn’t even held a grudge. Which was noble, if not completely uncharacteristic of him now as it had been back then.

He had his reasons for letting the whole thing slide and be forgotten.

One: He wasn’t sure that Sans had gone on purpose. He meant to bring that up with Gaster, but he only saw the doctor twice more after that night and failed to corner him both times. And, inevitably, memory of Sans’ absence became elusive along with a great many other scenes from their shared past.

Two: Sans really hadn’t been in any state for an interrogation upon his return. He startled Papyrus awake, nearly earning himself a magic attack through the sternum in the process. Not that he seemed bothered. The sharpened end of the bone glowed a dim red in the darkness. Sans pushed it aside with the back of one hand. He was on his knees on the mattress, in Papyrus’ bedroom.

He wouldn’t have been able to easily get to his own. Papyrus had moved a bookshelf in front of the door in the hopes that one day he might forget it was even there. But given the way Sans held Papyrus’ skull in his hands, the way his eyelights moved over him, searching his face, scanning his body— Papyrus got the impression that this was where he wanted to be.

There was snow on his shoulders and on his sleeves like he had been standing outside of the house for a very long time. “SANS, WHERE—” He was cut off as his brother crashed into him, squeezing him tight.

Papyrus finished his question. He asked several others, rapid-fire, body tense as Sans clung to him.

He got no answers. Sans just held onto him, arms shaking from sustaining such a vice-like grip for so long. Shaking from something else too maybe.

The first time Sans had left, he had come back terrified of his brother. That terror had turned to animosity before it mellowed to a sort of prolonged apprehension. They hadn’t shared a bed. Sans never let his guard down around him. Now he had come back a second time and, instead of flinging him away, he couldn’t seem to hold him tight enough.

Papyrus lowered a hand to the back of Sans’ jacket, felt his ribs expand and contract, felt them shudder. He made a sound that was small and miserable, and Papyrus felt he should keep asking questions but Sans was clearly in no state to provide him with answers.

Papyrus sat very still for a very long time. It was only when Sans’ crushing hold on him relaxed and he slouched forward, either asleep or something close to it— It was only then that Papyrus realized the thick white layer of powder on his brother’s jacket wasn’t snow at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally had the free time again to finish this chapter. Hopefully the next won't take nearly as long. If it does, that means life is being a hectic pain in the ass.
> 
> Huge, HUGE thank you to [Skerb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skerb/profile) for beta'ing this chapter! ❤❤❤


End file.
